Ind Aff

“This is a sad story.”

This first line of the story sets the mood explicitly, telling the reader to expect a tale of woe. It uses alliteration (“sad story”) generates a sibilant sound to reflect the image of the rain falling.

“[H]e lit a spark which fired the timber which caused World War I which crumbled the Austro-Hungarian Empire, the crumbling of which made modern Yugoslavia possible. Thirty million dead (or was it forty?) but who cares? So long as he loved his country.”

The repetition of “which” four times stresses the chain of events that Princip’s actions led to; the structure of this narration of occurrences is also an allusion to the Jewish traditional song “Chad Gadya,” which describes a similar fateful chain of events—Fay Weldon once wrote that many of her childhood friends were Jewish (Weldon, Fay. “Fay Weldon on Hampstead: ‘I was a literary groupie from the antipodes.’” The Guardian, 22 October 2018). The rhetorical question “who cares?” underscores the ultimate tragedy to which that the assassination led.

“Ah, but I loved him.”

This is the first time of many when the narrator expresses her feelings toward Peter. To accentuate this expression of affection, Weldon includes the interjection “ah,” which reads as a sigh of love. However, the sighing sound in combination with the “but” also expresses resignation, suggesting that the character loves Peter despite his complaints.